Notes About Baseball, 7/14

The Big-Market d'Arnaud

In The Room

The quality of catching in the National League is kind of nuts right now.

Of the top 10 catchers in MLB by BWARP, seven call the senior circuit home. And that 70 percent is awfully top-heavy, with National Leaguers occupying spots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8.

I point this out because you'd be forgiven if, in the face of all this catching excellence, you'd overlooked the performance of one Travis d'Arnaud since his recall on June 24th. Since then, Travis has raked, hitting .295/.338/.525 across 65 plate appearances (MLB average at catcher: .249/.316/.385).

It's obviously a small sample, but were he to maintain that pace his .863 OPS would land him fifth among all catchers in baseball. And it's not a reach putting those kinds of expectations on the guy.

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I've been pleasantly surprised that Billy Hamilton has become a player who is very valuable even if he remains at the break-even point on steals. His OPS is above the NL average for CFs (.743 to .727), and the defensive systems agree that he's (at least) a better-than-average defensive CF. Overall, he's been a ~+3 WAR player, and we're only 60% of the way through the season.

He'd be worthy of All-Star consideration even if he wasn't the active player most likely to produce a "Wow! I've never seen that!" moment on any given night.

If only Eric Davis had had the health tool. He would have smashed ARod's power/speed numbers in both 1986 and 1987, if he'd had the same amount of plate appearances that ARod had (748 for ARod compared to 487 and 562 for Davis). Davis was at 27HR/80SB in 1986 and 37HR/50 SB in his abbreviated seasons.

He was also a monster in RBI Baseball, as I remember it, which is very important. I also seem to recall him leading the league in the amount of chew he could jam into his cheek. It was like he was chewing on a tennis ball.

Good call, lopkhan. Ephemera aside, Davis was, in fact, a monster when healthy.